Army 10 Miler--Bagram Airfield Shadow Run

This morning I ran the Army 10 Miler here at Bagram Airfield. While the flagship race is held each October in VA/DC, the Army holds satellite or "shadow" runs around the world to coincide with the main event.

At the start of this deployment my hope was to be home to run this race in DC in front of my wife and family, but alas, twas not to be...

Still, I've been training for this run for the last 6 or 8 weeks, and I'm very pleased with how the race turned out. The particulars are as follows:

Time: 1:15:34
Avg / Mile: 7:33
Elevation: ~5000 feet
Place: 36th (out of ~500 here at Bagram)

This is me (on the left) with Patrick, and we ran the first 6 miles of the race together. We helped each other stay loose and find our pace, and I probably would have run 2 or 3 minutes slower without a strong partner to help push me through.

The event was very well put together by Task Force Warrior, the unit that took over the mission that I was working on for my first 7 months in country. Above you see the band that played at the start/finish line. They drew liberally from the Rocky soundtrack, and really, who doesn't run faster when they've just finished listening to Gonna Fly Now?


This is my training partner Nigel, an officer from New Zealand who I worked with for several months. Nigel is the guy that forced me out of bed early in the morning to go on long training runs--thanks a lot, Nigel. (No really, thanks a lot!)

You can also see in this shot what a beautiful morning it was here in Central Asia. It still gets pretty hot during the day, but the mornings lately have been wonderful.